...Remington’s plan calls for it to receive $145 million in bankruptcy “debtor-in-possession” financing as it winds its way through the Chapter 11 process. Cerberus will no longer own the 200-year-old Remington, while creditors will get equity in the company in exchange for the debt being written down. ...

...Remington's business operations will continue to operate in the normal course and will not be disrupted by the restructuring process. Payments to trade partners, employee wages and other benefits, support for customers, and an ongoing high level of service to consumers will continue without interruption. ...

This entire field is turning into a real buyer's market. Just looking over at ammo at gun-deals.com, 7.62x39 is going for ~$0.15/round, while IMI .223 brass case is down to $0.25/round. On one hand, as a buyer it's great seeing these prices. On the other, things like Remington filing for Chapt. 11 are happening.

I could see something like this happening to say, Kel-Tec or such. But Remington? That's hard to believe.

Might be time to think about trading up the AR though, in this market. Or maybe hold onto the old one as a spare, and wait for the prices to run back up. They will, you know.

I hope this is enough to help them pull out of the funk from the last several years. I lot of missteps and bad coincidences, and major moves and tooling changes added up to fail. They had a sterling reputation among the hunters and precision shooters, but flushed that away. There floundering gave others like Ruger, Savage, and foreign firms like Tikka/Sako and CZ a chance to grab market share.

Hopefully they can get back to be a premier hunting rifle company, a premier mfger of precision rifles, and for goodness sakes pull the ammo line out of the 1990s. While CoreLokt is a trusted basic hunting load, they totally missed the boat on bonded bullets for defense and hunting (minor try with CoreLokt Ultra but weak marketing), and do they even make target grade bullets and/or ammo? Meanwhile Winchester, Hornady, and Federal are eating up the market and even new players such as Sig are doing much better at it than Remington/UMC.

Remington needs to clear the decks and push hard into areas they historically dominated. Win back a major spot in hunting and precision target shooting, and meanwhile figure out if they can win some new territory in rimfire and defensive markets, especially rifles. Not sure they should even try any handguns but rifles in those markets they need to get a solid foothold. If I was CEO for a day:

1) Cancel all Thunder Turd and Golden Bullet production and figure out how to make QUALITY rimfire ammo like CCI, Aguila, and Federal at least, and quit selling junk. Maybe even learn how to make European level target ammo like Eley, RWS, Lapua/SK. Maybe start by rebranding some of it just to establish name association with quality rimfire. Even about the cheapest ammo out there, Blazer, is ten times better than ANYTHING from Remington.

2) Look at Tikka, CZ, Savage, and Ruger and figure out how they are being so innovative, keeping costs down, and still producing accurate and reliable guns that the public wants to buy. Ruger had main rifle platform the M77. When it became too expensive for the working man crowd they came out with the Ruger American, which was not a cheapened M77 but a new design that was cheaper yet still decent quality a shooter/hunter could still enjoy. Figure out how Tikka and Browning make such excellent smooth bolts and light, crisp triggers.

3) S&W broke into the rimfire plinker market out of the blue in a big way with the M&P 15-22. The Ruger 10/22 is well over 50 years old and still a dominate market seller. Even Marlin does good business with a very old design, but reliable and accurate plinker in the Model 60. Remington should be able to come up with an even better "tinker toy" modular rimfire semi-auto. And then they should figure out how to at least compete with Tikka and CZ at the moderate cost target rifle segment, and really should try to have a precision line for Olympic style competitions.

4) Partner with bullet companies like Nosler, and Sierra or Berger, and Barnes and develop premium centerfire lines for hunting, target and self-defense. Also need to develop a reliable bonded pistol bullet. Speer really nailed it with the Gold Dot (inexpensive to make, reliable performance, and accurate), but has dropped the ball in getting any noticeable quantities of GD bullets out as components for reloaders. right now Federal and Winchester pretty much own the police market, but Remington/UMC should be able to break into it, especially for LE sniper rifle ammo.

2) Look at Tikka, CZ, Savage, and Ruger and figure out how they are being so innovative, keeping costs down, and still producing accurate and reliable guns that the public wants to buy. Ruger had main rifle platform the M77. When it became too expensive for the working man crowd they came out with the Ruger American, which was not a cheapened M77 but a new design that was cheaper yet still decent quality a shooter/hunter could still enjoy. Figure out how Tikka and Browning make such excellent smooth bolts and light, crisp triggers.

It's been no picnic in the industry. I know Federal has had a series of layoffs the past 2 years. I'm willing to bet between Olin and Vista Outdoor life looks pretty tough right now. Remington was the poorest run of the group and it's not surprising to see it suffer a bit.

They've made some horrible mistakes. The 800 and 700 are shadows of their former selves and the 1100 looks like a dinosaur next to the Winchester SX line or any of Binelli's semis.

I grew up with an 870 and if asked I'll still tell you it's my favorite shotgun. But when I show up to shoot trap or skeet I bring my Winchester SX3. I shoot better with it (and semi auto doesn't help with trap).

I don't feel comfortable talking ammo. I know several Federal people and I'm not a ballistics guy.

I don't know. Maybe they need a shakeup and get back to making good products. When they lose core users it's never a good sign.

Sad. Maybe it was also a simple fact that Cerberus bled the company dry.That's been known to happen with big co's before. Look at Sears...

Yeah, there are a lot of ways to suck money out of a company. I think their debt increased from under $200 million to almost $1 billion under Cerebus ownership. Although I listed several product missed opportunities, the worst damage is as you point out is the financial side. Heavy debt burden, very old Illion site that may be extremely expensive to clean up in order to sell (from likely pollutants), worn out machinery being replaced with CNC, and probably a boat load of pension obligations.

Even if a miracle happens and they get their products line competitive, I doubt they will overcome the financial burdens. They would be better off to start another company fresh, sell all patents and designs from old company to new one, then shut down the old company in whatever state it has to be in (Ch 11).

Cerberus bought Chrysler from Daimler and then ran it into the ground until the bailout and the buy up by Fiat.

I knew Remington was a gonner once Cerberus/Freedom Group got a hold of them.

Yep. Cerberus' plan was standard corporate raider. They came in and merged several entities together to make overhead on book look better while many costs including the trigger settlement were pushed into future. Their planned exit strategy was to dump this combined company on stock market. But with downturn and stalling category sales there was no interest in the offering. So they started taking on huge debt to pay off the inside investors of the scheme. Now they are dumping the shell on those who financed that debt. They have bunches of government contracts so in end it is probably break even for the debt holders (they will get money back out but little return).

For us preppers it signals the end of the $400 AR. Production wil drop more in line with demand. But did any of us really expect that to continue indefinitely into the future? Big question in my mind is what will happen to Marlin. It would be a great spin off. It suffered badly being tied to the other brands.